The massive fire in the city of Haifa led to the evacuation of the city of thousands of residents and was part of a large wave of forest fires across Israel. Photo by Gili Yaari /Flash90

JERUSALEM — Three Palestinians were arrested on suspicion of carrying out arson attacks in the West Bank during last month’s forest fires.

The three men were arrested on Nov. 26 in a joint operation of the Israel Defense Forces, the Israel Police and the Shin Bet security service, the Shin Bet said in a statement released on Sunday. The arrests had been under a gag order. [Read more…]

WASHINGTON — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump “remains firmly committed” to moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, his transition team said.

“This is a commitment that the president-elect made numerous times on the campaign trail, that he remains firmly committed to,” Jason Miller, a transition team spokesman, said Friday on the daily briefing call for reporters.

The prior evening, Trump nominated longtime adviser David Friedman to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel, and in the campaign’s release, Friedman said he looked forward to working from the embassy in Jerusalem.

JTA asked Miller on the briefing call whether that meant Trump has a timeline for moving the embassy from Tel Aviv, and he said it did not. But he reiterated Trump’s commitment to such a move, noting that he chose as an ambassador someone who is on the record backing the move. Miller said it was too soon, with 35 days until inauguration, to schedule such an action.

Congress recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 1995 and mandated the embassy move, but successive presidents have exercised a waiver on the move, citing national security considerations.

President-elect Donald Trump is nominating a top Jewish surrogate, David Friedman, to be ambassador to Israel, with a statement saying Friedman will serve from Jerusalem and describing the city as “Israel’s eternal capital.”

Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who has for years worked for Trump and his real estate development business, was with Jason Greenblatt, another Trump lawyer, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, one of his main emissaries to the Jewish community. Friedman this week briefed the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on what to expect from a Trump presidency. [Read more…]

A Pew Research Center study published Dec. 14, 2016, found that Jews worldwide have four years more of schooling on average than the next-most educated group, Christians, who average about nine years of schooling. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Jews are the world’s most-educated religious group, with an average of more than 13 years of formal schooling, according to a new study.

The Pew Research Center study published Tuesday found that Jews worldwide have four years more of schooling on average than the next-most educated group, Christians, who average about nine years of schooling. Muslims and Hindus are the least-educated religious groups, each with about 5 1/2 years of formal schooling. The global average is less than eight years.

Jews led the groups in several other categories. Jewish men and women have the smallest average gap in years of formal schooling at zero (Hindu women, on the other extreme, trail men by 2.7 years). Jews were the most educated in the 55-to-74 category. Sixty-one per cent of Jews have at least some post-high school education; the global average is 14 per cent. Ninety-nine per cent of Jews have had some formal schooling.

Among Jews worldwide aged 25 to 34, women are more educated than men. Jewish women in that age group have more than 14 years of formal schooling on average, and nearly 70 per cent have attended some form of higher education. Jewish men in that cohort, by contrast, have an average of 13.4 years of formal schooling, and 57 per cent have had higher education.

While 81 per cent of American Jewish men aged 55 to 74 has had higher education, the number drops to 65 per cent among those aged 25 to 34. Pew attributes the decline to the growth of America’s Orthodox Jewish population, which attains formal secular education at lower rates than non-Orthodox Jews.

American Jews have the highest rate of higher education, at 75 per cent (compared to 40 per cent of Americans generally), and have an average of 14.7 years of schooling. Jewish Israelis have an average of 12 years of schooling, and 46 per cent have had higher education.

The least educated Jewish population is in South Africa, where Jews have an average of 12 years of schooling, and only 29 per cent have higher education. In the country as a whole, only 3 per cent of the population has higher education.

Jews in Israel have far more education, on average, than Muslim Israelis, though the gap is narrowing. Among the oldest Jews and Muslims, there is a nearly six-year gap in formal schooling. Among Jews and Muslims aged 25 to 34, however, the gap shrinks to 3.7 years.

The Cheif Rabbis of Israel, Rabbi Itzhak Yosef (L) and Rabbi David Lau (R) speaks during an event, on January 11, 2016. Photo by Yaakov Coehn/Flash90

JERUSALEM — Israel’s Chief Rabbinate formed a panel to set standards for which Diaspora rabbis’ conversions it would accept as valid.

The Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis issued a joint statement Wednesday afternoon saying they had formed the five-member committee following a meeting earlier in the day of members of the Rabbinate Council and the Supreme Rabbinical Court.

In announcing Wednesday’s meeting last week, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said a list of recognized rabbis would be created based on the standards that were determined. The Rabbinate would automatically recognize conversions — as well as marriages and divorces — by the listed rabbis. Israel’s rabbinical courts have in the past handled disputes over the legitimacy of conversions performed abroad. [Read more…]

JERUSALEM — Dozens of female aides to Israeli lawmakers showed up to work at the Knesset in short skirts to protest the enforcement of an institutional dress code.

At least nine aides reportedly were refused entrance to the Knesset on Wednesday due to the short length of their dresses, according to reports.

The protest came after at least two parliamentary aides in recent days were detained while trying to enter the building under the Knesset dress code, whose enforcement has been beefed up in the past couple of weeks.

Lawmaker Manuel Trajtenberg of the Zionist Union party reportedly removed his jacket and shirt and tried to enter the Knesset in his undershirt in support of the women.

“You’ll all have to wear burkas!” he reportedly said to the women. [Read more…]

WASHINGTON — Pleading with American Jews to “have faith that brighter days are ahead,” U.S. President Barack Obama bid emotional farewells to the Jewish community at his final Chanukah parties as president.

Jewish community leaders, lawmakers, top Jewish Democrats and major backers of Obama’s campaigns attended two separate parties on Wednesday at the White House. [Read more…]

JERUSALEM — The Islamic State claimed responsibility for firing two missiles from the Sinai Peninsula at an Israeli border crossing, and that the Israeli military retaliated with airstrikes.

The long-range Grad rockets fired Monday were aimed at a crossing on the Israel-Egypt border, but landed in Egypt. The Islamic State has claimed in the past that it fired rockets at Israel from the Sinai. [Read more…]

“This is the inevitable result of pro-Israel-at-any-cost policies,” said Yonah Lieberman, 25, a founding member of IfNotNow. “They are so caught up in their desire to ensure that the U.S. government supports Israel unilaterally that [they’re] willing to sacrifice [their] own values.”

NEW YORK — “This Jew says no to white nationalism,” one sign read.

“Silence is akin to consent,” another said, quoting the Talmud.

A third displayed a lyric from a Yiddish song: “We will outlive them.”

The signs, along with chants like “Donald Trump, it’s your fault; Stephen Bannon, oy gevalt!” were not only directed against Bannon, the president-elect’s choice for chief strategist. As hundreds of Jewish protesters marched up Manhattan’s East Side on Nov. 20, they also targeted the Zionist Organization of America, the pro-settlement group that had invited Bannon to its gala that night.

Bannon never showed up at the dinner, but to these protesters that wasn’t the point. [Read more…]

JERUSALEM — An Israel Police officer was stabbed in the head and moderately wounded by a Palestinian man in Jerusalem who was shot and later died.

A boy, 12, from eastern Jerusalem, also said he was injured in the head by the same assailant in the early Wednesday afternoon attack in the Muslim quarter of the Old City, although it is not clear to police how it happened. The officer and the boy were transported to a Jerusalem hospital.

The 21-year-old assailant, from the village of Beit Surik, north of Jerusalem, was shot and critically wounded. He died of his injuries in the hospital. He reportedly approached a group of police officers who were at the Lions’ Gate, pulled out a screwdriver and started to attack one of the officers, according to police.

The attack came a day after a Palestinian woman from eastern Jerusalem was arrested after attempting to run over security forces at a West Bank checkpoint.